Wyoming
Practice what you preach: ASU generates three turnovers against Wyoming
Arizona State forces 3 turnovers in win over Wyoming to start 2024
All offseason, coach Kenny Dillingham preached getting turnovers. Forty seconds into the season’s first game, the defense produced its first one.
Four games. That’s how long it took for the Arizona State defense to generate its first turnover in 2023.
Forty seconds. That’s how it long it took for ASU to get its first turnover for this 2024 season.
Redshirt junior linebacker Zyrus Fiaseu read Wyoming junior quarterback Evan Svoboda perfectly and intercepted the Mesa Red Mountain alum on the second play of the game, returning it for a touchdown to start the year in near-perfect fashion for the Sun Devils to establish an early 7-0 lead.
They didn’t stop there either.
On the very next offensive drive for the Cowboys, facing a long third-and-23, the ASU defense again capitalized on a mistake from Svoboda, this time as another linebacker – junior Keyshaun Elliott – intercepted Svoboda on an overthrown pass. Seven plays later, redshirt sophomore Ian Hershey booted a 29-yard field goal to make it 10-0 at the 6:19 mark in the first quarter.
Coach Kenny Dillingham called the linebacker room the “most improved” during the preseason. And less than 10 minutes into the first game, the group proved him right. It’s also a testament to ASU’s ability in the transfer portal as both Fiaseu and Elliott are transfers. The Sun Devils picked up 30 transfers this past offseason, with the class ranking No. 30 in the nation and fourth in the Big 12, according to 247Sports.
ASU added its third turnover of the game in the third quarter when Svoboda attempted to hit wide receiver Tyler King on a swing pass to the left, but threw the ball behind his intended target. ASU redshirt senior Justin Wodtly scooped it up and ran 6 yards for the touchdown to make it 41-0 with 6:07 to go in the third quarter.
It was all part of a superb evening from the ASU defense, which held Wyoming to just 53 yards of total offense in the first half. Wyoming didn’t score its first points until 2 seconds remained in the game.
One of the themes of spring and fall camp for ASU was emphasizing the need for turnovers.
Great play all around: Sam Leavitt leads ASU to convincing victory in 1st career start
“I expect us to run to the football, and I expect us to get takeaways this year,” ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham said ahead of the season.
ASU didn’t get its first takeaway until the first quarter of the fourth game of last season against USC when linebacker Tate Romney recovered a fumble. The Sun Devils were the last team among FBS schools to force their first turnover last season.
ASU was a dismal 127th — out of 130 schools — last year in turnover margin. Rice, Nebraska, and Temple were the only schools to finish below ASU in 2023.
That trend is now shifting in favor of the Sun Devils. The message is starting to get through.
“It’s incredible,” Dillingham said in his postgame news conference. “Every single day — guys are probably bored of it — we start our team meeting and the only two things I show are: effort plays and takeaways. That’s it. Bad ball security, takeaways, effort. That’s it. I don’t show anything else. It’s those two things, over and over. It’s just to get in their mind that if you play really hard and you win the turnover battle, all these schemes that you’re about to go do are awesome, but they’re obsolete. And we have to be able to do those two things, and then go play smart football. That was game-changing when you turn the ball over at that rate. It was as close to a shutout as you can possibly get. So in my mind, it’s a shutout and it’s two defensive touchdowns. Awesome job by our defense tonight. They deserve it because they’ve been working hard.”
ASU also executed on running the ball as senior running back Cam Skattebo (11 carries, 49 yards, one touchdown) and redshirt senior running back DeCarlos Brooks (six carries, 47 yards, one touchdown) led a potent, multipronged ground attack.
Even redshirt sophomore quarterback Sam Leavitt got in on the action, showcasing his scrambling ability to the tune of 47 yards on eight carries.
In all, the Sun Devils rushed for 241 yards on 49 carries as a team. ASU had 499 yards of total offense on the night in a commanding 48-7 victory.
Logan Stanley is a sports reporter with The Arizona Republic who primarily focuses on high school, ASU and Olympic sports. To suggest ideas for human-interest stories and other news, reach out to Stanley at logan.stanley@gannett.com or 707-293-7650. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @LSscribe.
Wyoming
Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat
Wyoming
Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”
Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.
Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.
Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.
“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”
The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.
Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.
Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.
Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.
“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.
Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”
Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.
For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.
Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.
In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.
“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”
But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.
“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.
While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.
“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”
As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.
“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”
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